Study: Little kids aren’t spending enough time outside

Only nearly half of preschools get outside with a parent to play every day. (Shutterstock / Anatoliy Samara)

Catching frogs, climbing trees, making mud pies, kicking around a ball—these are the true joys of childhood. But it turns out that many little kids aren’t experiencing them these days because they’re not getting outside.

A new study, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, looked at data from 8,950 preschool-aged children in the U.S. and found that nearly half didn’t go outside with a parent to play every day. And girls were 16 percent less likely to get outdoors than boys.

Why the gender discrepancy? It’s likely a combination of boys asking for more time outside and parents assuming boys are more athletic and better suited to the outdoors, according to Time.com.

Minorities were far less likely to spend time on the playground with their parents than kids with white parents: Asian mothers were 49% less likely, black mothers 41% less likely and Hispanic mothers 20% less likely to venture outside with their kids. It’s probably not coincidence that minority children have a greater tendency to be overweight.

Interestingly, moms were more likely to take kids outside than dads and moms who frequently workout were also better about getting their kids fresh air.

But what I find most interesting is that the study assumes parents should be outside with their kids during outdoor time. When I was a kid you came home from school, changed into grubby clothes, and met up with the neighborhood pack of kids in the street for an afternoon of riding bikes, playing kick-the-can, and building tree forts. And yes, we were outside unsupervised in preschool—although then we were more likely to be running around on someone’s front lawn or looking for bugs in the backyard with a parent occasionally checking on us.

Today, our world is often perceived as too unsafe for kids to run around outside without an adult. What’s more, there’s little time for swinging around on the rope swing outsid between dance classes, math tutors and soccer practice. And when free time becomes available it’s spent in front of the TV or on the computer. And we wonder why our country is experiencing a child obesity epidemic?